I promised I'd save him, take him home! I promised him!" . . . Thomas hugged Chuck to his chest, squeezed him as tightly as possible, as if that could somehow bring him back, or show thanks for saving his life, for being his friend when no one else w...
He had never imagined so clearly the consequences of mailing a letter--the impossibility of retrieving it from the iron mouth of the box; the inevitability if its steady progress through the postal system; the passing from bag to bag and postman to p...
Only one thing to it: a strong stomach. The guts to gladhand a man you're going to stab in the back; pledge allegiance to principles you stomp on every day; righteously denounce some despot in the press and sell him arms under the table. The talent t...
Dale’s face is older. Just a little. Around the eyes and mouth. The skin of his neck. The back of his hands. Maybe not, he thinks, turning on the faucet, letting the water grow warm then hot. He begins shaving his lubricated chin and cheeks. Chrysa...
That's how it is with want. As long as you lack something you yearn for it without cease. if only I could have that one thing, you tell yourself, all my problems would be solved. But once you get it, once the object of your desires is thrust into you...
When I left her office, I felt like she'd gut-punched me, brushed me off, slapped me back and forth, gave me a cool compress to put on my cheeks, cold-cocked me with a stiff uppercut to the jaw, picked me up, brushed me off again, then kicked me in t...
I thought of a sign I had seen... another scary time, when I was two hundred feet up in a giant karri tree in South West Australia. At the point where the precarious spiral ladder grew even steeper and narrower to reach the fire-watch platform atop t...
I promise that this won't be our last night together, that there will be lots of nights together. I'm promising that we will see each other again, and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that happens in less than a year." He gently brushed ...
He stood just near the club’s steps, his back to me along the foggy English night, and it was not until I’d passed him and began my ascent of the many steps that I’d heard his voice. The voice I knew, in all my years of living upon the Earth, t...
All that time I'd spent worrying about why I'm here and how I'm supposed to live had kept me from remembering that Jeremy Pratt will never be back. His people will never have him again. He is Jeremy Pratt who died and stayed dead and will never get a...
How embarrassing that she ever did something that silly. But, good God, she was seventeen. At that age, we're mostly high-pitched and crazy. All urgent chemicals raging around the blood course. And that's why we do dangerous and embarrassing things, ...
One day Lal shahbaz was wandering in the desert with his friend Sheikh Bhaa ud-Din Zakariya. It was winter, and evening time, so they began to build a fire to keep warm. They found some wood, but then they realised they had no fire. So Baha ud- Din s...
An eye is meant to see things. The soul is here for its own joy. A head has one use: For loving a true love. Feet: To chase after. Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind, for learning what men have done and tried to do. Mysteries are not to be ...
Carol, a swing-shift cocktail waitress in the Bird of Paradise's show lounge had gotten home (guesswork, here) around 2:15 - 2:30, poured herself a glass of milk, and had opened the back door of the kitchen for reasons unknown. (Fingerprints were lat...
The rocking of the boat by the waves was soothing but unknown. The men on the shore were asleep. Not the twelve-year-old, though. He shifted and lay on his back and decided to look up at the sky. What he saw took him by surprise. He was basically a c...
The Marquis sighed. "I thought it was just a legend," he said. "Like the alligators in the sewers of New York City." Old Bailey nodded, sagely: "What, the big white buggers? They're down there. I had a friend lost a head to one of them." A moment of ...
I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowe...
The plain old Sam Vimes had fought back. He got rid of most of the plumes and the stupid tights, and ended up with a dress uniform that at least looked as though its owner was male. But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armourers had ma...
THERE IT IS,’ my mother says, and what she means is that the dot we’ve been nearing for weeks, the one that’s been growing into a larger dot with two smaller dots circling it, has now become even larger than that, growing from a dot to a disc, ...
When the old way of seeing was displaced, a hollowness came into architecture. Our buildings show a constant effort to fill that void, to recapture that sense of life which was once to be found in any house or shed. Yet the sense of place is not to b...
I will never quit. My nation expects me to be physically harder and mentally stronger than my enemies. If knocked down i will get back up, every time. I will draw on every remaining ounce of strength to protect my enemies and to accomplish our missio...
